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An anonymous reader writes "When it comes to RAM, as every geek knows, 1 GB does not mean 1 billion bytes.. it means 2**30 (1,073,741,824) bytes. However, several decades ago "they" decided that GB, MB, and KB would be interpreted differently when it comes to disk drives; 1 GB means exactly 1 billion bytes. Ed Bott points out that Microsoft's marketers and Windows kernel developers aren't on the same page when it comes to these units: the marketers use the more generous decimal interpretation, while Windows measures and reports capacity using the binary (2**30) measure. Careful customers who bother to check what they've got have been known to get peeved by the discrepancy."

Actually, when it comes to correctness: the International System of Units defines kilo-, mega- and giga- as powers of 10 instead, not powers of 2. I think it is much clearer for a user to define a megabyte as a million bytes. How memory is handled inside a computer is something developers care about, no user should be bothered with it. So all in all I agree with the marketing-people, albeit for different reasons.

While far from definitive, this would seem to suggest that the first reference equivocating 1k with 1024 with an article in 1964 by Gene Amdahl, followed by a similar assumption of equivalence in a 1965 article by MV Wilkes. I think it's safe to say these references pre-date those hard drives you mention.

This would suggest that computer science did originally adopt the standard definitions of kilo etc. but then started to deviate from them in the mid-60's for the sake of ease.

You are obviously not a computer engineer. You try to do memory allocations in increments of base 10. Anyone who understands computers know that it isn't just "annoying", it is something that doesn't work correctly. Forcing base 10 onto a computer that works in base 2 is a logical fallacy.